


Tempest

by chezchuckles



Category: Castle (TV 2009)
Genre: Angst, Episode: s04e23 Always, F/M, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-21
Updated: 2020-06-25
Packaged: 2021-03-03 22:15:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 7,321
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24832960
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chezchuckles/pseuds/chezchuckles
Summary: After the events of Always, 4x23, Castle and Beckett in his bed, both trying to work through the storm."What's past is prologue." -The Tempest, William Shakespeare.Rated Mature. Multiple chapters.
Relationships: Kate Beckett & Richard Castle, Kate Beckett/Richard Castle
Comments: 11
Kudos: 45





	1. Chapter 1

\----

Beckett winced as her bruised back hit his mattress. Lightning chased the thunder outside his windows, so loud it made her jaw rattle.

Steam rose from her body, naked and hot-damp with sex. She hurt all down her spine, a throbbing that wouldn't release no matter the orgasm. Her breathing was labored and she could still feel the impression of him inside her. A blunt force.

Castle laid next to her, not touching, and she wondered if his anger still ran as high as her desperation. The aggression of their sex hadn't done a thing to temper the pit of need that had opened up in her guts that day. Wandering without him. And judging by the ungentle way his hands had been on her, the flint of his face when he'd first pushed inside her, sex wasn't going to fix this.

Maybe they shouldn't have gone straight to it. Her body was still as damaged as her heart.

He didn't move, either for her or away. She could hear his breathing level off. So did the ardor.

She chewed on her bottom lip, a knot in her chest that had nothing to do with being thrown from a roof. "I'm… sorry for making everything more difficult that it should have been," she said. Her voice was shredded, her back was painful with bruises. She'd nearly died, and yet still, in that last moment, she'd been certain he'd come back for her.

He hadn't.

"Difficult." Almost a question.

"I thought you would wait." Hot shame pricked her eyes; she pressed her arm over her face.

"Thought there was something to wait for," he rumbled.

Her chest heaved as she struggled for a breath. Something to say, even though she couldn't look at him. "Is that in question?"

"Now?" His long silence pinched her throat.

And then she felt his hand fumble against hers and take her fingers. She sucked in a hard breath and squeezed his knuckles. The force of his grip was like an anchor, and she could risk lowering her arm from her eyes.

Still, she didn't look at him.

"I guess that's up to you," he said. The low intensity of his voice made her hips shift with willingness, but her heart was cracked. "I guess it's always been up to you."

She pushed her fingers between his wide ones, a spurt of panic as it wasn't easy to do, to knit them as closely as she wanted. He squeezed back and it felt like a vise was being applied to every finger bone.

None of this was easy. Or painless.

"I invented so many obstacles," she admitted. "I didn't realize how much I'd hidden away from… you."

He was silent.

He was never silent. Couldn't he open his mouth and ramble on until she wasn't so nervous anymore? That was his usual m.o. Why had she thought sex would make all of this so clear and easy?

Her hips ached. An ache both good and bad.

"I, uh…" He lifted his fingers from the lacing of hers and shifted.

She froze, but the movement of his hand to his groin opened up that hungry mouth of desperation inside her again.

"Be right back," he rumbled. Castle rolled off the bed to deal with the condom; she watched his body as he moved to the bathroom, the thickness of him. The width and... stature.

She sat up slowly when he disappeared through the door, dragged her legs over the side of the bed to force herself upright. She gripped the edge of the mattress and closed her eyes against the pulse of pain, even as lightning bathed her face.

She stood, twinges in her legs, her hips, deep inside. Their actual sex was now mostly a blur with hot flares of images seared into her memory: his wide hand gripping her neck, the strange reverence of his mouth on the scar between her breasts, that first push inside her… and the rest was throbs of agony and ecstasy.

She wandered into the bathroom, forgot she was naked until they met at the door. She touched his forearm as he moved to help her balance, and then they passed, less awkward than she'd have expected.

She used the bathroom and then washed her hands. Bent over the bowl, the weariness made her spirits sink again. She ran cold water in the basin and splashed it over her face, trying to cool the fever of her skin. She stood and saw her own reflection, flinched at the drowned rat before her.

She dried her face and tried to run her fingers through the snarls of her hair. Had to drop her arms, it hurt too much.

When she limped back to his bed and crawled in, he turned from his side where he'd been watching her and laid on his back, still studying her. "Your spine is a canvas of bruises."

"Wasn't you," she promised.

His eyebrow slanted up and she realized he already knew that. Of course he did. He wasn't in the habit of violence.

She slowly scissored her legs under his sheets, tried to get comfortable. "Went up against a hired hit man… because somehow I thought my righteous anger was an invincibility cloak, that I couldn't fail."

"That's from fighting with him? Those bruises."

She nodded against the pillow. He reached across the mattress and wound his fingers around her bent elbow. She felt his shin against her toes and she smiled, relief unwinding like a cool ribbon.

"Then you should probably be on top for this one."

Kate laughed, let him drag her across the bed to him. "Already?" Reached him, reached for him. Oh, sure enough.

She would rather do this than lacerate her wounds.

Maybe it could save them.

—-


	2. Chapter 2

She melted on top of him, sinking into the heat and flush of falling action. He lightly skimmed his hands up her back, so careful that it made her tremble.

"Hurt?" His voice a burr near the back of her skull.

She turned her head and her lips brushed against the softness at his jaw. "Yeah."

His fingertips glanced down her spine, barely touching. "I don't know what to say."

She sighed. "Me either." He wasn't the one who had hurt her.

(Except he had.)

She could feel his ribs pushing against her stomach, the struggle to breathe. She shifted to give him a little less of her weight and the separation of their bodies was wet and awkward. She felt him untangle from her and pushed back.

She laid on her side and watched him peel the condom down and make an expert knot in the top. She was surprised when he tossed it to the floor and turned on his side to meet her.

"What a move," she murmured, lifting an eyebrow.

He touched her knee and slid his hand up her thigh to her hip. "You impressed?"

"I am." Nonsense words really, none of this conversation held the things they really ought to say. But it was comfortable where this newfound intimacy was not, not yet. "What time is it?"

He twisted, looking back to his alarm clock, and something in her twisted as well. "Almost three."

When he turned back, she wondered if he was anxious. He hadn't the smirk or the self-satisfied looks she was used to from him. The confidence he had when he got his way, when he was right. Was this the real side of him?

Was he as scared as she was, or far more low-key about this?

His hand moved, arrested between them suddenly, then continued its trajectory to her shoulder. It felt unnatural, this half embrace, as if he didn't know where to put his hands. Even his eyes wouldn't meet hers. He was looking at the sheet when he said, "What made you show up?"

A boom of thunder and the walls rattled, the lion in his frame seeming to roar. Her heart jack-rabbited, and his palm drifted, laid over her upper chest, fingers skirting the crease of her breasts. She knew he could feel her throbbing pulse.

"Are you afraid?" he murmured. Curved in his fingers and looked at her. "You are. Why?"

Tears burned but she couldn't. Not now. "I… have lost a lot of important things in my life and this was all my own doing—" Choking, and she couldn't speak for the way her throat closed with grief.

His eyes dropped from hers, but now his fingers stroked lightly at the place where her breasts met, gravity pressing them together as she laid on her side. She realized, a heartbeat too late, he was brushing the scar.

Not at all romantic, or sexy. Deliberative, she figured. Measured. Taking her measure.

"Your heart stopped," he said.

"What?"

"In the ambulance." Now he teased a nipple and skirted the under slope of her breast, against the curve, as if he had to be touching to tell her this. "She told me your heart stopped under her hands. There was so much blood, Kate."

She swallowed and it burned.

"Are you in pain?"

His question came out of nowhere, knocking her senseless, and she just stared at him. His hand withdrew as if denied and she grabbed him by the wrist, a flare of agony sparking behind her shoulder blade and up into the base of her skull. "Don't stop."

"Does it hurt?"

"Of course it hurts," she rasped. "It always hurts. Nothing is pain-free. That doesn't mean you stop."

He gave her a long slow look that flipped her heart, sent it into her mouth.

She released his wrist, couldn't understand how they could be so bad at this after two rounds of intense sex. Chemistry wouldn't be enough to get them through the storm.

"Not everything has to hurt you."

She sucked in a breath and let it out in a jagged stutter, pressure behind her eyes. He leaned in and immediately there was no distance, only his body pressing hers back, his hand caressing her stomach. She flinched but he leaned in for a kiss, and she rose desperately for it, her teeth already scoring his lip.

His leg eased over hers. His thigh pressed open her thighs. When his fingers eased between her legs she moaned, giving him leave to travel on, mouth against her breast.

This time it was a rushing noise in her head, a roar and whirl, a cosmic force.

Her orgasm tasted like seared ozone.


	3. Chapter 3

She woke in the darkness and the steady drum of heart and rain. His cheek laid against her ribs, his chin digging into her pelvis. She twitched involuntarily, a frisson of nerve endings or nightmare remnants, and he woke with a sucked in breath.

He pushed away from her, collapsed face down, fell back to sleep.

Beckett eased out of bed, not for his sake but for her own, made her way gingerly around the foot to the bathroom. She found herself bent over, head in her hands, elbows on her knees on the toilet, tears streaming down her cheeks from the pain.

He found her like that, and her shame closed up her throat. He didn’t touch her, but opened the faucet on the massive soaker tub she had somehow not seen, his naked profile lit only by the blue LED glow of an nightlight somewhere over her shoulder.

She cleaned up, leveraged herself off the toilet, washed her hands. Let the loud sound of water carry her away from shame. 

She jolted when he touched her lower back, hissed and arched as it blossomed. He caught her forearm to prevent her from stumbling, eased her into his chest. “I put some stuff in it, come on.”

She limped with him to the bathtub, despaired climbing in over those high sides. He didn’t speak, but he seemed to know, was hard and steady as she used him for support. She sank down to her knees and he followed her in, to her surprise.

An eyebrow raised to her unspoken question. Why wouldn’t he get in? His tub, his bathroom, his night. His claim.

He didn’t reach for her, let her move as carefully and slowly as she needed while the tub filled with hot water. The spasms in her muscle stopped firing, though the heat seemed to intensify the bruising ache. He was watching her; she felt like a cat being coerced into a bath.

He shut off the water. The sudden silence was eerie, but the rain against the windows of his bedroom and the roof above their heads made a chamber of isolation. Just the two of them.

“You didn’t make it difficult,” he said.

She finally managed to lean back against the high side, closed her eyes. “Make… I didn’t?” How many hours ago had she aborted this conversation?

“You made it clear,” he rasped. Sleep-caught voice and her guts clenched, a stirring inside her. He finned a hand and made the water swirl; the scent of lavender and epsom salts. “At the swings, you made it clear. In an oblique fashion.”

“Our usual fashion,” she answered. Her eyes were closed, her head against the slope. 

“Saying without saying. Unspoken. Subtext.”

She sighed.

“I guess that’s the problem,” he went on. She felt his hand on her ankle and she eased her legs out from where she was still crouched on her heels. “The not-saying part of things gets…”

“Mistaken,” she whispered.

He knuckled the back of her calf and she grunted, leg jerking. His chuckle made her slit her eyes at him, and his smirk widened.

And suddenly, there they were. Naked in a bath together but them. 

Tears stung, but he didn’t see them in the dark, in the water. She tilted her head back again to keep them drowned. So grateful they were still what they were. Partners.

The quiet was nice. It helped ease her shoulders.

“I don’t think I could have written this.”

She lifted her head, looked at him.

A little rueful. His knuckles dug into her calf and ran down to the heel of her foot, easing knots. Castle gave her a crooked and heart-breaking smile. “I’d never have gotten it right. Not this. Some of it I’d imagined, but this is…”

She waited; he didn’t finish. 

The rain eased against the windows, less frenzied, more steady. The water lapped against the tub with the movement of his hands against her other foot now, and she felt him nestle the first at his groin.

Oxygen filled her lungs, burned against the bruising. “You imagined…?” She was waiting for smartass or smartmouth, waiting for smirk or sardonic.

She got something else. 

He paused his massage. “My imagination gets the best of me. More often than is wise, given the number of times I’ve been down this road?”

What was the road he mentioned—fantasizing? She wouldn’t hold it against him, no matter how many times he’d pictured her naked. She kind of liked the thought now, and—

“A writer isn’t just inventing a world, he’s also inventing alternate universes. It’s sometimes about all the choices the main character didn’t make. At least with me it is.”

She lifted her head, opened her mouth to ask.

But he was staring down at the water, and he kept going. “So then all those possibilities are alive for me, all the things that could have happened, each permutation. Each alternate universe. Schroedinger’s cat.”

“Like building theory,” she offered. Unsure where now he was going, with that look on his face, with that tone to his voice. Low. Subdued. “That’s part of what makes you such a good partner.”

His eyes lifted; the blue was entirely too bleak to be passed off as middle of the night shadows. 

She froze.

“I write the story I want to hear,” he rasped. Like a plea. “I do it all the time. It gets me in trouble, but also makes my life a kind of… dream. But. In my darker moments, I doubted our story.”

The breath rushed out of her.

“I thought,” he cracked. Started again. “I thought I’d invented it. Us. And under the weight of that… everything was suspect in that light.” He frowned. “I went back over everything, every word at the swings, and neither of us said—it could have just been what I wanted to hear. In all that subtext. It could have just been me writing a better story.”

“It wasn’t.”

He took a deep breath. She saw the effort of his chest and lungs to work together, felt the tremor in the water.

So she started over, where she’d left off the last time. Years ago. “I’m not the easiest person to get to know.”

His eyes cut to hers.

“And I play it close to the vest. I’ve had to. After my mom died, that wall…” She ran out of steam, the words deflated. “It was selfish of me to ask you to be okay with being held at a distance. But that’s what a wall does, makes it hard to see past my own issues.”

“It wasn’t.”

She looked at him.

He did that one-shoulder shrug she’d come to understand as deprecation. From the man with a self-confidence index off the charts. 

Sometimes he surprised her still.

“It wasn’t selfish, it was just honest.” He cleared his throat. “And as direct as you knew how to be.”

She nodded, absorbed that sting. “Therapy has helped a good deal.”

“You’re here.”

She winced, tilted her head back against the tub. His self-confidence was back, apparently, for him to make digs at her now. “That was the point of it,” she mentioned.

He was suddenly moving, water sloshing over the tub, violent waves breaking against her neck, and his body looming over her, on his knees, hands braced at the tub near her head. There was a hardness to the cast of his face that made her thighs shift. She stared up at him, aroused by the way he carelessly studied her body, and she waited for what he might do or want next.

“You went to therapy for me.”

She snorted. “Not you. For me. And if you don’t know the difference, Castle—“

He grinned and smashed his mouth against her independence, stuck his tongue through her feminism. She thrashed once in the water, but it wasn’t real or purposeful, and the buoyancy worked against (for) her, letting him reverse their positions. 

She suddenly found herself in his lap. She was being lashed back against his body by the great weight of his arms, a hand cupping her breast from behind, the other hand between her legs. “Say you want me right now.”

“You know I do,” she choked out. Laid her head to his shoulder and arched into his not-quite touch, both submission and aggression. “You’ve known for years.”

He cursed softly at her neck and thrust two fingers inside her. She gripped the edges of the tub and rode that hard-won confidence to the upper atmosphere.


	4. Chapter 4

She floated in the heat while he stepped out of the bath, watched the water cascade from his body, studied the promised land she'd so long denied herself.

Denied him.

She swallowed roughly, and he disappeared into the bedroom.

She closed her eyes and drifted, tried to let the heat steal away her resurfacing anxiety. He was gone a while, she didn't know where, he hadn't said. His silence and his absence felt like a thorn at the base of her throat; each swallow tighter than the last.

"Time to get out."

She jolted, came awake to find him bending over the tub, opening the drain. She was still trying to orient when he hooked an arm under hers and bodily lifted her to her feet. "I looked it up. Heat makes it worse at first. Supposed to ice fresh bruises."

"Castle," she gasped. Stumbled. But he was stronger than he looked, firmer, and the tightness in her throat wouldn't let her speak. He was hauling her out like she weighed nothing.

"I thought it would be good for your muscles, but then I started remembering this scene I wrote for Storm." His voice was a burr, but his lips were against her cheek. The water on her skin made a strange friction as he drew a towel slowly across her back, patting her dry. "Close to the same thing here, and you don't know how much that terrifies me."

She pulled her head back, her palms flat to his naked chest, caught the flash of anguish as it stormed his eyes. "Sorry," she whispered.

"Had to go look it up, my notes, couldn't find them. Then—duh—I googled it and yeah. Ice and arnica, which I do have here, because my kid played rugby for a time—can you believe that? and she just graduated high school today and I—"

Kate pressed her lips against his open mouth, stilled the frantic tempo of his words. He went still, and quiet, and kissed her in return. She felt his stance loosen, and she walked closer.

His arms drew slowly around her, keeping the towel on, urging her against him. She sucked in a breath at the blossoming pain, leaned her forehead to his. "A moment, just a moment," she tried to promise.

He gave her that. A long moment. She found her breath again.

"Come to bed," he husked.

She moved without knowing she would, or could, and found herself being tugged by the wrap of the towel around her shoulders towards his bedroom. When she stepped through the doorway, she saw he'd been serious: he'd found a jar of some cream and brought in a bundle of freezer packs.

"I grabbed all of them," he husked. "We've had a number of laser-tag-related injuries in this family, plus the rugby days, so the ice packs multiply."

"I…" She winced, tried to play off the scene before her. "Didn't think we'd get to aftercare on the first date, Castle."

"Lie down," he said. His tone brooked no argument, his face stony. If he was playing the scene, he was a better actor than she'd have thought, and yet something about that hardness, that irrefutability, made her shift on her feet. "Kate."

She dropped the towel and crawled gingerly onto the bed, laid down on her stomach. Shivered. She'd been going for a joke, but her position, the quiet in his demand, made her stomach tighten with anticipation.

And, if she was finally being honest, this wasn't their first date.

She felt him settle beside her and she turned her head, watched his hands as he unfolded an ice pack from the top of the pile. He fit the blue gel pack into a sleeve which would protect her skin, and then he laid it at the base of her spine.

Skimmed his fingers over the flare of her ass. "Hold still."

"I am."

"You're trembling."

"Shut up," she muttered, buried her face in the pillow to cool her cheeks.

He chuckled; the atmosphere deepened, as if they were reaching for something. He smoothed arnica gel over her shoulders and upper back, his hands light, barely touching her. The gel was cool at first and then as he made circles over her skin, began to warm, tingling, yet goose bumps pulled up on her flesh.

He brushed the hair off her neck, wet from the bath, kissed her spine. She breathed into the pillow, turned her head to look at him, watch him. She'd never known tenderness like the touch of his hands, the heat of his side pressed to her hip where he sat on the mattress with her. She swallowed roughly and untucked an arm from her side, reached out to curve a hand over his thigh.

He shifted a little, widened his reach, one foot still on the floor. She caressed his bare thigh as he massaged arnica gel into her back, heat lifting from her skin in waves.

"I don't want you to die," he said.

"Well, I don't either."

Castle let out a breath, as if that was the great revelation. "I shouldn't have expected… immediate happy endings after you were shot. But I guess I did."

"Is this our happy ending?"

"I don't like endings," he rumbled. "And beginning seems unfair."

"Middle." She offered it with a dry mouth, his hands on her back still moving, her body responding though her heart shied away. "A comfortable middle."

He didn't look convinced. "More like a dream," he murmured. Though she wasn't sure that was what he'd said. It sounded like it, looked like it, the faraway-ness on his face. "You certainly look comfortable."

Back on safe ground. "At the moment, I really am," she smiled. "And yet. Deeply affected."

He leaned in and kissed the corner of her mouth. She didn't understand how there could be such heat and yet it be so gentle, so tentative. "I'm glad," he murmured. "Do you think you might want to stay?"

It hurt. Of course she wanted to stay. It should be obvious.

It shouldn't wound, but it sliced right through whatever shaky safety she'd built around them. Sliced to that place that used to have walls for protection and which had grown so soft over time, so vulnerable. "Where would I be going?" she whispered.

"I don't know, Beckett. I just don't know."

She closed her eyes to keep in the darkness.

He was silent after that, so closed-mouthed that she became aware, as he busied himself with ice packs and arranging them over her gel-slick skin, that he was waiting on her for something. That his statement was a nudge. Or a prompt. And she didn't have the script.

When her back was encased in ice packs, he laid the bath towel over her and eased fully onto the bed, obviously trying not to jostle her. He bunched up a pillow, tucked it and his arm under the back of his head. His eyes were on the windows, the rain beating against them.

"Did you come here to get out of the rain?" he asked.

She bit the inside of her cheek. She wasn't sure if he knew he was hurting her with these questions, or if he just thought they should be asked. "I came here because I want you."

He didn't answer, his eyes on the windows.

She shifted her hand to touch his arm, her throat tight, the distance somehow impossible. When she petted the soft skin at the vulnerable part of his bent elbow, he looked at her.

Jolted. "What's wrong? Are you hurting?" He was up on his elbow now, his hand curved to hers, as if to pull her out from under the ice packs. "Is it too many? Too heavy? I can—"

"No. No, it doesn't hurt. It feels better actually. You were right." She stroked the inside of his forearm with his fingers. "I'm, uh, rusty at talking. To you. About why I do the things I do."

He stilled. His eyes rested on her back and then came to her face. "Is that why you're crying?"

She let go of him, swiped at her face. "Am I? No. Just. No." She squeezed the bridge of her nose but he grabbed her hand and pulled her away from her face, peering at her. "Okay, I guess I am. I'm… bad at this, Rick."

"You're doing just fine," he said softly, laid back down on his side. Naked. He was naked, they were both naked, and yet he looked at her face, met her eyes, sought her. Not the skin, not the sex. She hadn't seen that coming. "I think we're doing remarkably well, all things considered."

"Yeah." She curled her fingers around his hand. She felt helpless, lying here with the ice on her back and her whole body aching. In a myriad of ways. "Yeah, I think it's just all the… questions I can't answer. Or don't know where to start. And I know I should, I do know that."

"True," he said slowly. "You don't always answer my questions, but I just word them differently. Or come up with new ones." He laid against the pillow and brushed the backs of his fingers against her cheek. "Eventually you will."

She nodded. Cleared her throat. "You wear me down."

He smiled at her, as if all was settled.

She wasn't sure if it was, didn't know when it would creep up on them again, her lack. "Come here," she whispered.

"I'm already here," he said. But he did scoot closer, his arm twining with hers, kissing the back of her hand. "Been here."

He had been here.

Until he hadn't.

And it was hard to let that go.


	5. Chapter 5

She woke soaked. Clammy and stiff, the night deep into the storm. She could hear the wind howling now, feel the creeping sensation against her scalp that meant lightning again.

At that moment, the room flared with it, illuminating Castle asleep beside her, his bulk like a bulwark. She licked her dry lips and planted her hands on the mattress, shifted up. An ice pack slid off her back, but she caught the others before they could fall. Neither her movement nor the tumble of the ice pack had woken him, and she eased upright, collecting the detritus.

Her back was knotted; she tried not to move too fast. Her shoulders were a new ache, and her hands, abraded and raw. She probably shouldn't have fallen asleep with the ice, it'd been left on too long. When she managed to get to her feet beside the bed, she had an armful of mushy and damp gel packs and they chilled her bare breasts.

Kate dumped them all on the floor at the foot of the bed, padded around to the bathroom. At least this time there were no tears. She was stiff, and she hurt, and it wasn't just her skin that was raw. She washed her hands and avoided her reflection, wondered what should happen next.

If this was her job, she would know exactly what should happen next, what came after this. But personally? She was no better at should than she'd ever been. She continued to be lost when it came to the most important things: who, rather than what, she loved.

Her back felt better now that she was up and moving. The stiffness actually kept the muscles from spasming, and she could admit the arnica and ice had done their jobs. And so—

What did she want?

Who. Who did she want.

Kate left the bathroom and stood over his sleeping form on the bed. She touched his hip, the curve of muscle meeting bone, a solid and firm slope under her fingers. He had heft to him, and she appreciated the solidness, the presence. He took up space and pushed for more.

(Just not when it came to them.)

Kate ran her finger down his thigh, watched his skin ripple and twitch in response. Between those thighs, the response was more pronounced, and she had an urge to take it in her hands.

She resisted, sat at the edge of the bed, explored skin with her eyes only, punishing herself maybe, telling herself she awaited consent. They'd never had a conversation about waking each other up. But of course, they'd never had many conversations.

Under her scrutiny, he woke with a little indrawn breath, as if chuckling in a dream, but he was slow to orient. His hand opened and closed in a fist, his eyes half-mast, that flop of hair over his forehead too enticing. She reached in and combed it back, leaned over him to kiss the oil on his skin. She felt his eyelashes against her lips.

"Beckett." And then, "Ah, Kate."

The relish in his voice was tinder. She was already alight. "Can I?" she murmured, skimming her hand over his hip bone, trailing around his navel.

"Can you—Oh. Yes, if you—" He grunted and his eyes closed. She kissed each eyelid, felt him shudder at her touch. She explored first, without looking, kept her eyes on his face, the movement of emotion across it. She watched for reactions, for the intensity of sensation, for what moved him, literally, his hips jerking, his fist clenching.

"You okay with this?" she said.

"I'm sure you know," he rumbled. His voice had a catch in it, either close to grief or close to the edge. She eased off, less tease and more purpose, and he let out a long breath, as if settling into familiarity, a known rhythm.

"You ever imagine this story?" she asked. "My hand for yours?"

"Yeah." His throat worked, his eyes opened. Boldly blue, and the lightning erupted as if to salt them with fire. "Never got it right though. The details." He made a rough noise and grabbed for her wrist. She waited, he breathed, chest expanding rapidly. Loosened his grip and laid his hand instead on her bent knee. "Never could have imag—ah, yeah, that."

"Mm. That?"

His grunt was delicious. The slit of his eyes said he knew he was in her power. She bit her bottom lip to keep her grin from being too ridiculous and leaned in over him to kiss the tight press of his lips.

His breath was fast against her mouth. "Kate." A curse and jolt of his hips. He felt impressive in her hand, ever more impressive as she moved. "Okay, okay." His words tended towards short and sharp now, his eyes so narrowed she wasn't sure he could see her.

And then his hand on her knee shifted, moved unerringly for her. She hissed and turned her head, like that could give her back control of her body's response to him. (Lost cause). He didn't even fumble, he knew exactly where to touch her, how to spread her thighs with one hand, what stroke she liked, where.

"Whoa," he said. "This gets you hot."

She could growl, she was already so worked up. "You think?"

"Being in control," he said. His voice was strained though. They had both abandoned soft and sweet for rough and insistent. She knew he was tipping towards the edge; she could feel the tremor through him, the holding back he attempted and failed, and her own was already so close.

His climax was a stormburst, but he didn't miss a beat, dragging her down over him and pushing his fingers inside her. She felt the pulse of him still throbbing, and then she was spinning off into orgasm.

It took a long time to come back, and even then she wasn't sure she could move. Her shoulders throbbed low key, and they were tangled together, unable to move.

She felt the kiss against her temple and her heart squeezed.

"What's wrong?" he muttered. "You're frowning. You're not supposed to frown when I make you come."

She sighed against his chest, her body slack, as if she'd been drugged. "Supposed to just be for you."

"Definitely was, it was." Wrapped around her too tight, so that she mewled. "Promise…" But he was mumbling into her hair and she was unable to keep her eyes open.


	6. Chapter 6

She woke when he shifted her off his arm, an apology in her ear as she groaned. "Arm's asleep, one sec."

Kate felt the bed bounce and slitted an eye, saw him shaking it out, flexing his hand. Flexing biceps, muscle moving under his skin. "Your arms are…"

His head whipped around to her, brilliant eagerness, and he turned on his side to cozy up, like it was a slumber party and she was telling secrets. "Go on." He batted his eyelashes. "Do tell, Kate Beckett."

She laughed, sluggish as she felt. "Mm, not sure I should. Might go to your head."

There was a war on his face, and she saw it, naked and raw. Whether to make the joke they all knew was coming, or to give way to the honest grief she'd inadvertently stirred up. She never told, did she? And he was so tired of it.

"This your side of the bed?" she asked, diverting them from either course. Both too familiar, old paths she longed to leave.

"My side of the bed?"

She patted his mattress. "You dragged me down and over. Sat on that side when you were slathering arnica over my back. Your side?"

His eyebrows lifted, then he twisted bodily, as if checking something. When his face turned back to her, he was laughing somewhere inside. "I guess it is. Alarm clock on this side, that drawer has all my stuff in it."

"Stuff," she deadpanned.

He cracked up, took her hand on the mattress to squeeze. "You'll find out."

She grinned. "I could find out right now. Climb over you and open the drawer."

He pouted. "Not until I can preload it with something fun."

She laughed, but her breath caught as he laced their fingers. "You don't use the other bedside table?"

"Not really." His eyes moved past her to the piece of furniture in question. She saw something there she meant to prod, but he asked instead, "Do you have a side of the bed?"

"I guess it's this one."

He blinked.

"Now," she clarified. Now that he had the other. Now that—

"Well, how confident we are," he hummed.

She laughed again, a relief so great it was like floating. "I usually sleep in the middle. Use both sides of the bed."

"Probably I do too. You might found out I hog the middle."

"Well, there we can meet," she tried.

He beamed. He seemed to like her attempts at sappy romanticism. She liked him looking at her like that.

"I quit my job."

He gaped. "You what?"

"I quit. Being a cop. I… led Esposito right down into it with me; lucky he's not dead. I was reckless and stupid and—"

"And you quit."

"I don't want to die."

He just stared at her.

She averted her eyes, stared at their twined hands. She ran her thumb over the outside edge of his, shivering as it got to her. She hugged herself with her free arm and he seemed to take it as a cue. Before she knew it, the sheets were pulled up, the comforter, and they were ensconced.

And hidden from each other.

Should she tell him she wasn't cold, she was only desperate?

Maybe that was too much right now. Too much honesty, too much rawness. Too much sex.

And men were usually ego-attached to their stamina. She wouldn't bring it up if it… couldn't be brought up.

"So what's in the other bedside table drawer?" she asked. Remembering the dart in his eyes when he'd looked past her to it. Wanting to throw him off her scent. "The one you don't use."

Sure enough, there it was again. "Nothing." Too quick, too fast an answer.

"Oh, I'm looking now," she said, half tease, half dread. She twisted in the bed and reached for the drawer pull, had to scoot—

He landed half on top of her, his arm hooking her hips so immediately that the press of his body against hers momentarily had her distracted. "Beckett—"

But she already had the drawer open, her upper body raised to peek in. "It's your book."

He groaned, his face landed against her lower back, a puff of hot, ashamed air that nevertheless made her heart flip. She strained father and plucked up the Heat novel, twisted around to confront him with it.

Accidentally smacked his nose with it as he gave her luminous puppy-dog eyes. "Ow. Beckett. It's nothing."

"It's the first book you wrote." It was floppy, paperback, and well-used. "The advanced reader's copy you gave me to read?"

His cheeks burned.

"It is," she croaked. Her jaw dropped, and she sat up fast, opening the book, untangling from his arms to place it in her lap. "105?"

"Oh God. Don't, no. Don't." He plucked it out of her hands and tossed it toward the side table where it slid but came to a stop, fell into the open drawer almost like he'd done it a thousand times. "It's not that. Not the sex scene." She looked at him; his embarrassment was high. "That's the other drawer."

She wanted to laugh; he intended to make her laugh. But. "Castle."

"You marked it up."

"What?" she asked, thrown.

He scooted down, propped his shoulder against the pillows, lower than her. "You made little pencil marks. Where the editors missed something. Typos." He winced. "And some underlines. Never figured out what those meant."

Her chest squeezed. She scooted down as well, putting herself at his level, against his body. He sighed and slumped, rolled back to the mattress as if he thought she might want space from him.

Kate followed, draping her arm around his ribs and laying her head on his chest. "I… did do that. I thought it was helping." She'd seen one of those typos in the published version, though. He'd said nothing, she had said nothing.

She'd forgotten about it.

He hadn't.

"The underlines?" he asked quietly.

She bit her lip, winced. "Parts I liked the best."

He was quiet for a long time. When she lifted her head, his eyes were... shiny.

Kate squeezed his ribs. "You're kind of pathetic, aren't you?"

"Beckett."

She held him harder, her heart lodged like a fist in her chest.

He groaned. "Would it be better if it was the sex scene. Let's say it's that. I keep it close at hand to reread the sex scene, Beckett. That's why. Not because you read it and marked it up. That's—"

She silenced him with her mouth. Even as she pressed her lips against the flood of his words, she knew she'd done it once before tonight, stopping up his emotional response with her body. She knew it wouldn't be an ideal long-term solution to his terror.

His terror.

God. That was sobering. The long-term solution was, well, long-term. Sticking. She couldn't prove that with words, she could only prove it by being here.

She kissed him until the tension went out of his body. Slowly now, no rush, no need to crash into each other. Desperation was a part of them—he'd just been forced to show his, and she'd definitely shown hers when she'd arrived on his doorstep—but desperation didn't have to rule their every moment.

She slowed him down. Felt his heart rate settle, felt his body loosen. She rubbed her thumb over his bicep and her lips over his lips until he drew that arm around her and held her tightly.

The storm faded. She felt in her back and ribs that the battering had been brutal, felt the twinges in her shoulders and the rawness in her hands—but in his tug on her, in his mouth against hers, there was a balm.

When he pressed her to the mattress and his face between her breasts, she could tilt her head and see the open drawer. See the advanced reader copy she'd marked up. She had hidden in the precinct locker room to read away from his too-eager eyes (and yet he'd followed her there, too, hadn't he? He'd followed her.)

She wrapped her arms around his shoulders and hooked a leg over the back of his thigh, urging him to make it all come true.

To believe it was real.

—-

Brilliant sunlight speared his eyes, and the whole thing flooded back to him.

The storm. Kate driving inside to kiss him. Her confessions, his. The lightning of their bodies.

Her pain.

Castle hauled himself upright, the bed disheveled, wide.

Empty.

He was alone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Thanks for trusting me on this one. We all know that Castle isn't alone for long, that Kate is only eager to wake him with coffee so she can show him she's in this... but that first reaction of his has never felt good to me. And if they spent the night doing interesting fun things and talked only as much as they had to, if Castle confessed just how much he was tangled up in his love of her, and Kate was her characteristically reserved self... well. I think she's trying, I think she thinks she said a lot that night, as you can tell by his question and her rather flat response about this being more than just a one-time, I-lost-my-job kind of thing.
> 
> I never do author's notes, because it's supposed to stand alone. But I wanted to talk to all of you, who came on this journey, because I miss this universe we all created for a while. I miss that feeling. I write original novels too, which are on my Amazon author page (Laura Bontrager), but they don't have this same feeling of community. They're written in isolation, so to speak, while fanfic is written in community, with all of you. So thank you for shaping my writing and shaping all of these stories over the years.


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